Dad’s Martin Houses Go Back Up

“I asked you a question,” she said. Not mean. Just level. “A boat cover. They sell them at the farm store in Norman. How much does one cost?”

He looked down at the boards of the dock.

“About ninety dollars,” he said.

“Ninety dollars,” Darlene said. “And Daddy’s been putting those houses up since before we were married. Since before I could walk good. Mama held the level on that first pole, Kyle. You know that. You’ve heard that story at every Easter dinner for twenty-eight years.”

He did not say anything.

“You could have bought a cover,” she said. “You could have asked Daddy to move one pole down the bank. He’d have done it. You could have asked me. You could have asked anybody. Instead you went out at sunup and threw them by the trash like a busted lawn chair.”

Her voice cracked on the last part. Just a little.

“I didn’t throw them,” Kyle said.

“One roof is cracked clean through,” Darlene said. “Rosie and Daddy were up two days fixing it.”

He looked up then. He looked past her, up the slope, at Dad in the folding chair. At me standing by the fourth pole.

At the fourth house on the sawhorses, with its new shiny roof.

The Fourth Pole

I will tell you what happened next, because I have thought about it many times since.

Kyle Brewer set his coil of rope down on the dock. He walked up the ramp past my sister, and he touched her elbow once as he went by, and she let him.

Then he walked up the slope toward us.

Dad watched him come. He did not get up out of his chair. He just sat with his hands on his knees and his windbreaker zipped to his chin, and waited.

Kyle stopped in front of him. He was holding his cap in both hands.

“Thurman,” he said.

“Kyle.”

“That was wrong of me.”

Dad nodded slowly. “It was.”

“I had twenty years in that boat,” Kyle said. His voice was rough. “I’d scrubbed it six times in a week. I wasn’t thinking past that. That’s not an excuse. I’m just telling you where my head was.”

“I know where your head was, son,” Dad said. “I was forty-one once and I had a boat too.”

Kyle let out a breath that was almost a laugh.

Then Dad turned in his chair and looked at me, and I knew what he wanted. I have known that look since I was six years old.

I picked the fourth house up off the sawhorses, bedsheet and all, and carried it over to the pole. Ozzie had come up from the pond, and he took the other side. We hooked it onto the cable and slid the pins in. I checked that the cotter keys faced the right way, so Dad would not have to tell me.

Then I stepped back from the crank and held the handle out toward Kyle.

He looked at it. He looked at me.

I did not say anything. I did not smile. I just held it out.

He put his cap back on and took the handle.

“Hold it steady, son,” Dad said from his chair. “It slips a little near the top. Don’t let it get away from you.”

Kyle cranked. He has big forearms from twenty-eight years of running a grader and changing his own blades, and the house went up faster than any of the others had. The winch clicked and clicked. The white house rose past his face, past the top of his cap, up into the bright morning.

Near the top, the crank did slip a little, the way Dad said. Kyle caught it. He eased it the last few turns.

The house stopped against the sky.

Kyle let go. The brake held.

It was eleven forty by my watch. Four houses. Sixteen feet up.

Nobody said anything. Down on the bank, one of the fishermen nodded at the fellow by the tailgate. He nodded back. Ozzie folded his bread bag and put it in his jacket pocket.

And in less than ten minutes, the first martin came in and landed on the porch of the fourth house.

Dad did not count that one out loud. He just smiled.